Synopsis "Who Murdered Shakespeare? (in English)"
Spinning off from his popular CROSSTIME ADVENTURES OF CARTER PAXTON, medievalist Stanley Lombardo presents a scholarly edition of a previously unpublished manuscript by Elizabethan playwright and intelligencer Christopher Marlowe. For the first time in five hundred years, Marlowe speaks in his own voice, detailing his adventures in what he calls "Some Particulars Concerning an Investigation into the Murther of One Wm. Shaxspeare, Esq., of Warwickshire." As replete with deception and betrayal as Marlowe's "Edward II," as filled with sorcery and seduction as his "Doctor Faustus," "Who Murdered Shakespeare?" will be remembered as the playwright's greatest adventure - and very nearly his last. Theatre owner Richard Burbage has commissioned poet, playwright, rakehell, and Her Majesty's ace intelligencer, Christopher Marlowe, to investigate the murder of an obscure would-be dramatist named William Shakespeare. In the course of his inquiries, Marlowe incurs the deadly wrath of an arrogant aristocrat, as well as the hatred of malevolent necromancer Edward Kelley - who seeks to distract Marlowe from his investigation by tempting him with a sensual succuba. And ever lurking in the shadows of crime-riddled Elizabethan London is Marlowe's implacable enemy, Ingram Frizer, who hopes to collect the bounty on the poet's head. As he plunges into the bizarre twistings of the case, Marlowe encounters a mysterious time voyager calling himself Arthur Gordon Pym, a master of ratiocination and cryptography. Together they stalk the mean streets and alleyways of London, encountering cutpurses, cutthroats, gamblers, and whores while simultaneously Marlowe endeavors to assist Pym in finding a cure for his wife dying of consumption - in 1845! Aided by Carter Paxton and Father Tranquillus, Marlowe and Pym pursue an elusive assassin who haunts graveyards and saves lives for his own enigmatic reasons. But while the private intelligencer stalks Shakespeare's murderer, Marlowe is plagued by the crucial question -- Does Shakespeare's murderer stalk him?
